Slow Horses, by Mick Herron

How could you not love a book with the phrase, "Mr. Sleek simply stepped to one side, his demeanor suggesting that he'd just drawn the word grudging in a post-dinner game of Charades."  This book is clever and imaginative, it posits an England where secret service agents who have failed spectacularly are shuffled off to Slough House to due the mindless drudgery of intelligence work until they quit or die.  The Slow Horses have one more shot at redemption -- in their own minds primarily -- when they seek to rescue a blameless young Pakistani student who has been kidnapped by a right-wing extremist group who threaten to cut the man's head off and show the beheading on the internet as warning against or retaliation for Islamic terrorist attacks.